The Sword of Damocles
by CSIGurlie07
Summary: Gibbs' point of view in Good Cop, Bad Cop. One-shot. Rated M for language.


A/N: You all knew it was coming! And here it is. My take on the much anticipated companion to the premiere. I upped the rating probably higher than it needed to be simply because I didn't want to risk it with the language. There's one f-bomb, a couple damns, and bunch of hells. Nothing really too bad, but you never know who's sensitive these days.

There will be an official tag to the episode in my other story, Something More, don't worry. I just didn't feel like this would flow well with the rest of the chapters. It's a bit different in style than I've done in the past. It's pretty much how I interpreted all the looks and subtle actions I noticed while watching last night. Please let me know how you all like it!

* * *

Gibbs followed Ziva as she paced past the mirror of the interrogation room. He did not like this, not one bit. This was exactly what he did not want to have happen. Ziva was being questioned. By his own people. Her people. That was what he had been trying to remind her these past few weeks, after all. That she was safe. That she wasn't going to wake up one morning and find herself back in that desert camp, being interrogated. And yet there she was, on the other side of the glass. Trapped, alone, waiting for her interrogator to join her. All things considered, he was proud of her: she was holding up much better than could be expected. Definitely agitated, but she hadn't lost control.

Part of him wanted to be on the other side of the glass. To be there for her. To make sure that Vance did not overstep his bounds, so that Ziva did not have to venture outside her comfort zone. At that, his other half chastised himself. He might still have fears of her withdrawing completely if she were pushed too hard, but he was not giving her the credit she deserved. If nothing else, she had proven her resilience. She was alive after all, and after being pulled between two countries, two governments, and two leaders for years, she had found the strength to take a stand on her own. And all that was after months of torture at the hands of terrorists.

Another part of him realized that perhaps, despite the difficulty of this situation for everyone involved, it could be exactly what they needed to get to the bottom of this once and for all. He knew better than anyone that she had been carrying a heavy weight on her shoulders ever since her return. Ziva hid it well in the office, but in the privacy of his townhouse, of his basement, she strove to distance herself from him as much as possible. And he had let her, not willing to risk losing what little of herself she still allowed past her barriers. But this case could bring it all to light, and perhaps give her a chance to share her burden.

* * *

The dark-haired man who stepped from the elevator immediately set his nerves on edge. The golden complexion and dark hair told him exactly who he worked for, and exactly why he was in America. The man also bore a strong resemblance to one Ari Haswari; Gibbs had no problem with hating this guy's guts as much as he had Ziva's half-brother. Ben-Gidon was entirely too calm and too fucking smug to be there on Ziva's behalf. He was there for one purpose, and one purpose only. And Gibbs knew what it was before the bastard even opened his mouth. He was going to drag Ziva back to Israel.

Well, Gibbs would be damned before he let that happen again.

* * *

Son of a bitch.

Her commanding officer just threw her to the dogs. He and Director David both were willing to destroy what little credibility Ziva had left, all just to put her in contempt of NCIS. To entice NCIS to send Ziva back to Israel. Gibbs straightened, gazing at Ben-Gidon thoughtfully. He had now had the word of a Mossad Kidon unit leader that Ziva David had shot a man she knew to be a United States Marine point blank, simply for suspecting he had sold the Israelis out.

Well, Gibbs wasn't buying it. Perhaps the Ziva Mossad had thought was returning to its folds would have done it. The Ziva it had loaned to NCIS all those years ago would have done so. Little did they know that the Ziva who had come back to them was not the same Ziva they had sent to America. But Gibbs knew exactly who had gone back to Mossad last spring. It had been a young woman, confused and hurt over the death of a close friend and former lover, who had stood alone on the tarmac as the plane rolled away. An investigator whom Gibbs had trained, who knew better than to get trigger-happy before all the evidence was in. Who had tried for so long to shed the role of assassin, the role of a killer, to be more like the man whose life she had saved. To be more like the Marine she had admired, and had come to love. It had been a woman who had abandoned the quest for her father's pride, and had instead done what she could to become someone Gibbs would be proud to work with, and to be with.

Suddenly, it struck him. Had he ever told her, that she had succeeded in her newest endeavor? That she had had his pride, respect, and love ever since his stint in Mexico? He was chagrined to realize that he hadn't. He knew that she had shown her, in his own way, but sometimes, that just wasn't enough.

He'd fix that, just as he was going to fix the back-stabbing son of a bitch smirking at him from across the room.

* * *

"Of course she's going to deny it," Ben-Gidon said as Ziva sat at the table with her back to the mirror.

Yet again, Gibbs was forced to keep himself from slugging that cool smirk from the bastard's face. Could he not see, from his position directly across from Ziva, that she was _not_ going to deny anything? Gibbs was familiar with her expression—it was the one that told him that she was resigned to her fate. Whatever was happening now was out of her control, and she realized that. She had withdrawn only slightly, enough to keep up her mask of indifference while she was in front of her Mossad superior. But Gibbs was still able to read her like a book.

There were two possible outcomes, she knew. But she was aware that it would not be her making the decision this time. This time, it was Gibbs' decision. His decision to prove Ben-Gidon's story wrong, and to prove her innocence.

This time, there was no hesitation. There was no indecision. Gibbs knew exactly what was going to happen, as it was something that should have happened both when Vance divided the team over a year ago, and when Ziva had lost her way in Israel. She had saved his life more times than he cared to count. Now, it was his turn to fight for her.

And by God he was going to fight.

* * *

Gibbs' heart broke a little bit more as he took in Ziva's stoic expression. Just like it had when Ziva requested to stay in Israel, like it had when he discovered her ship had gone down in a storm. Just like it had when they had found Ziva, only to realize hours later that she wasn't all there. Behind her carefully crafted mask, Gibbs could see the betrayal in her eyes. It made his gut burn in anger; he knew better than anyone that Ziva herself was more loyal than any other member of the team. If had gotten her into trouble once or twice, sure, when Jenny was Director. If Ziva was loyal to one person, it was for life. She would go to hell and back for them, as this past summer so acutely reminded them all. It occurred to Gibbs that though Ziva had once said that everyone broke under torture, he knew in his gut that she had not. According to Tony, the questions Saleem had been asking were ones that Ziva would have known the answers to. Not only that, no NCIS agents in the region had been eliminated, meaning their identities were still secret.

Ziva may have lost sight of who she could trust, but there had never been any doubt in Gibbs' mind as to who _he_ could trust. He had never doubted her loyalty; even when her loyalties had come into conflict, he had trusted her heart.

But now, he understood how she could have gotten lost in the deceit and lies that filled her life. Because her gaze told him that she knew the truth to his words, even before he voiced them.

"Your father, Ziva… he's not a good guy. He's dirty."

She did not meet his gaze, but it didn't matter. He knew that the revelation did not come as a shock. She had known the truth of his words, and the truth of her brother's accusations, for a while now. Gibbs wondered how long she had known. Did she realize her father's nature after she discovered that Rivkin had been using her on the Director's orders? Or was it when her father ordered the Kidon unit to complete the mission despite the casualties they had taken? Maybe it was when NCIS had been the ones to rescue her from the desert, and not her father's men. Whichever it was, it meant that she no longer had any false impressions of what her father was capable of. And Gibbs hated that she had been forced to come to terms with that—no daughter deserved the pain of realizing her father was a monster. But by God, it was the last time she was going to have to deal with it.

"You tell Eli David to stay away," Gibbs ordered Ben-Gidon, letting every ounce of malice and rage he felt towards this man, and Ziva's father, drip from his words. "She is off-limits," he declared, gesturing possessively towards Ziva. He felt pride, in doing something he had wanted for so long. She was his, and now the entire world was going to know it. She wasn't going anywhere. And if Eli David tried to force her hand again, Gibbs was officially prepared to fight tooth and nail to keep her safe.

Gibbs watched with satisfaction as Ben-Gidon left the interrogation room with his tail between his legs. But the sensation died as the door closed behind the Israeli, and he looked at Ziva's silent figure sitting at the table. Something was still eating at him, and Gibbs realized that something was still missing from her story. The case was over but her pain was not. Taking a seat across from her, he looked her in the eye.

"We're not done," he said simply. "Finish it."

"You know everything that happened." When she didn't meet his gaze, he knew that she knew what he wanted to know. But he elaborated anyway.

"After the ship. After you scuttled it, made it to land."

When she finally returned his gaze, Gibbs could see pain, hurt, betrayal… and shame. It shook him. It hadn't been the death of Cryer that was bothering her now. His death, while it had taken her by surprise, was marginally justifiable, given the circumstances. She had bonded with the Marine, but Cryer had tried to sell them out, and Gibbs knew that if he were in Ben-Gidon's place, he would not have hesitated to pull the trigger.

As Ziva finally told him the final part of her story, Gibbs fought to keep his expression carefully schooled. Suddenly, everything he had noticed about her behavior since her rescue made sense. He had always known that part of it was what could be expected after months of interrogation, but he had recognized something more, something that ran deeper than PTSD or shock. And now he knew.

With the death of Daniel Cryer, United States Marine, she had felt the loss of whatever ties she still to NCIS and the person she had become. She had been reabsorbed into the ranks of Mossad's finest operatives. And she hated herself for it.

She had known the risk of continuing the mission on her own, and instead of balking at the task, she had used it to her advantage. She would finish it, and herself, once and for all. She undertook the mission for the sole reason of the likelihood that she would not return. And she had been successful, up until the point that Saleem had not reacted as predicted, and instead of executing her, had taken her prisoner.

"I had nothing but death in my heart."

The self-loathing in her voice was tangible. She felt guilt over succumbing to the siren's call of her upbringing, and killing the people she had. They had been terrorists, but she felt scorn for her actions nevertheless. Gibbs blamed himself for that. It had been his guidance that had helped her to realize that such killing was not something to taken lightly. But she killed the courier anyway, and had killed everyone she encountered on her way to objective—Saleem. Anyone else would have been impressed by her skill; hell, even Gibbs himself felt some modicum of awe for her prowess. But she had viewed it as a failure, and would have even if she _had_ been successful in executing Saleem.

"You never had a choice," he said. "He didn't give you a choice." Gibbs didn't need to specify who _he_ was. "He raised you to be a ruthless, soulless killer." Even as he said the words, he knew that they didn't change anything in Ziva's mind.

"I did not mean to survive it."

Ziva's tone turned her words into almost an apology, as if she were sorry that she was sitting across from him now, alive. And Gibbs recognized that the she _was_ sorry she had lived. She done everything she could to get herself killed, short of putting a bullet in her head herself. But instead of easing the pain of the death and betrayal that had plagued her entire life, she had lived through months of torture, and in the end had put the lives of her NCIS colleagues at risk. Not that any of them would ever blame her for the situation they had found themselves in. After all, they had volunteered to take out Saleem—they hadn't even known Ziva was still alive.

"You didn't," Gibbs said, his voice soft. "That part of you died out there." The part that she had come to hate most about herself. The last part of herself that had prevented her from fully allowing herself to be accepted by the team.

It was in that moment that Gibbs realized the true meaning of her words, from that fateful day in Tel Aviv, when she confided in him her inability to trust Dinozzo. She had said she wasn't sure whom to trust, but now he knew that she had meant she could no longer trust herself. But maybe now, after so much had happened, she would be able to have the same faith in herself that the rest of the team did.

"I am sorry," she confessed, her voice thick and trembling from carefully contained emotion. "Gibbs."

A moment later, Gibbs had stood, and crossed to where she sat. Placing his left hand atop her folded ones on the table, he leaned down to whisper softly in her ear.

"You came back to me, Ziver. Don't ever be sorry for that."

His lips brushed her hair as he planted a light kiss to her temple. His words, and his tender touch, proved to be too much for her—the dam broke, and she struggled to keep her tears at bay as she nodded in acknowledgement. He stayed, standing quietly in the corner until she was cool and composed once more. When she was ready, he opened the door for her, but after giving her orders to go home for the rest of the day, Gibbs turned and headed to the elevator that would take him up to the Director's office.

He had a man to see about an NCIS Special Agent application.


End file.
